The revolutionary and the reactionary are united in one fundamental aspect: both must always believe themselves to be right. Right according to which system? Right according to orthodoxy, inherited wisdom, the hegemonic forms of knowledge permeating throughout our society? This question is seldom answered, and still more seldom is a coherent reason given to justify raising this particular system over all others. There is a much more pertinent question, however, which does not concern itself with explaining how and why one constructs this opposition between ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ and what one places in each respective category: why must ‘right’ - however defined - be forever privileged over ‘wrong’?
The revolutionist seeks only to assert their ‘right’ - always in the singular, a ‘right’ of which they have declared themselves the sole bearers - across society - equally singular in conception. The enforcement of a frozen ‘right’ - coupled with the repression, internal as much as external, of thereafter contradictory falsehoods - is, however, always tainted by microfascisms, by tyrannical expressions, stripping existence of all vitality. The revolutionist is always a Rightist - an upholder of a particular order, a single preconceived definition of ‘right,’ correctness of belief and action - and at the moment of their revolution they unavoidably present themselves as the latest conservatives; the rejection of Rightism is not, therefore, to be found in Leftism, but in Wrongism: an unconditional willingness to be ‘wrong’ - consistently and intentionally - in the eyes of any absolute system, to embrace a variety of not altogether consistent ephemeralities, with no concern for their accuracy, only their fleeting applicability.
We are deeply sceptical of all orthodoxies and ideologies, not because we consider them ‘wrong,’ but because they consider themselves ‘right.’ In their place we propose a constantly evolving, pluralistic politics of affinity, always fighting off the urge to uncover any single ‘right’ way, so that we might still play with a continuous procession of radical falsehoods.
“Did the great philosophers notice their own contradictions? Or did they not see them, and did only their successors take account of them? I speak of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus. Of course, they were aware of their own contradictions but these hardly troubled them; they knew that this was not the most important thing.†(Lev Shestov)
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.†(Friedrich Nietzsche)
“Human fallibility being what it is, victory and truth do not always go together. Therefore, if you have to always win, you can’t always be true.†(Nachman of Breslov)
“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.†(Sir Ken Robinson)